Superintendent: bad tenured teachers hard to fire

By eSchool News

June 30th, 2008

A case of a misbehaving tenured teacher in NY illustrates a nagging problem in school districts elsewhere around the country: firing bad teachers. It is also part of the ongoing debate over education reform and the role tenure plays in the process, reports the Associated Press. An English teacher in a Long Island district remains on the payroll, earning an annual salary of $113,559, even after pleading guilty earlier this month to drunken driving charges — her fifth DWI arrest in seven years.
The teacher will remain on paid leave at least until a disciplinary hearing in August, and it will be up to an impartial arbitrator to decide whether she needs to be fired as she faces a likely prison sentence. Advocates for reform cite a list of egregious examples they say demonstrate why teacher tenure rules need to be overhauled…